Tuesday, November 29, 2016

I was thinking, just yesterday or the day before, that I'm really done collecting figures. I still love Momohime and all of them, of course, but... anyway.

So, months ago, I pretty much stopped paying attention to the old NeoGAF figures crew that moved over to MyFigureCollection. Time was there were weekly posts by a very generous forumer who who find all the news from the western and Japanese news sources on figs, and once a week I could hit the thread to discover everything that was coming down the pike. This was important, because the high-end figs are usually only available for preorder for a limited time, many months prior to release.
But, again, I stopped looking a long time ago.

Anyway, on lunch, I was out of things to read. So I opened the myfigurecollection forums to see whassup annnd...

...well...

...remember the Muramasa DLC that released in the west last year? There was the one with the demon princess (awesome gameplay, very funny), the one with the farmer (meh gameplay, very funny), the one with the awesome ninja (awesome gameplay, solid story) and the one with the Okoi.

Fishy Tales of the Nekomata, the first and (in my opinion) best of the DLC series, was absolutely frickin' fantastic. I loved the tragic story of the housecat who gave her soul to avenge her human mistress, annnd...

Well, shit. I'll have to see the sculpt, obviously, but it's from Alter - they're very good. As long as it's not an onsen version, chances are pretty good.

Okay, so. Numbani. I'm on attack with my beloved Tracer, and my team is getting like nothing done, mostly because the reds' defense is... textbook, and on point.

Two tanks - D.Va and Rein. Two healers - Mercy and Zen. Two DPS - Reaper and Bastion.

Mercy is the keystone. They won't have the healing to stop us, if we take her (and hopefully, the Bastion) out. The Mercy, though, is well-guarded by the Bastion.

To kill Mercy, I need to kill Bastion.

Our show begins looking out over the enemy formation.

0:09 - 0:11 : That's Bastion in the back-right. I could take the walkway above and drop down right on him, but that puts me in clear view of his team, and he could hear my footsteps. I go the long way 'round.

0:21 - 0:24 : I don't know how the hell he saw me. Maybe he heard my footsteps? Maybe he was just looking around and saw me in his peripheral vision - either way, my sneak attack is fucked.

I give him a few seconds to think I've moved on...

0:29 - 0:35 : ...but Reinhardt shows up.

He's here to keep Bastion safe.

To break their defense, I need to kill Mercy. To kill Mercy, I need to kill Bastion. To kill Bastion, I need to kill Reinhardt.

Okay. Step one. Break the shield.

I zip in to scratch him up a bit, and confirm that Bastion's attention is still on me (it is).

0:35 - 0:40 : I bounce back and forth, laying damage onto his shield from behind the cover of the building.

I want him to swing, which forces him to drop the shield and will allow me to lay some bullets into him. In the absence of his swings, though - to kill the Reinhardt to kill the Bastion to kill the Mercy - I need to bring his shield down. Not shooting a Rein's shield is one of the biggest mistakes a DPS can make.

But he doesn't. Hit me, I mean. He keeps his shield up and... maybe thinking I'd learned my lesson, he turns away.

0:40 - 0:43 : He's wrong. I know I won't kill the Bastion by zipping in and scratching him up (I would have to land all my shots, point blank, on his glowing weak spot - so it's theoretically possible but whatever), but I get Rein's attention back.

0:43 - 0:49 : C'mon, I want you to do it. Hit me.

Bastion's popped his ult and moves onto the point - hopefully ignoring me for now. He kills our Zenyatta, and his Zenyatta kills our Zarya. It's time to accelerate things.

0:49 - 0:55 : Zipping behind a Reinhardt's shield to scratch him up is a classic Tracer move. But this - blinking in from so far away, putting 100% of the rounds into his back point blank as I turn before blinking out of melee range - was the most-perfect Rein-shield-blink I have ever done.

He takes one swing and I fill him up with lead again while his shield's down - I'm already out of range - and he throws that shield up. But it's cracked. I know it'll fall soon. I put one more clip into it.

It shatters. He's defenseless.

And here

we

go.

0:55 - 0:57 : One clip is all it takes to finish off Rein.

0:57 - 1:00 : One pulse bomb is all it takes to remove the Bastion.

1:00 - 1:07 : Our Soldier is just off the point, and he takes advantage of the broken defenses to lay into Mercy from afar. I scratch her a bit, but only get 21% of the kill. More than enough.

The red D.Va is running up to the point, and I rush forward to challenge her, but she ain't backin' off and my health is low. Our Soldier kills their Reaper.

I rewind back to the point. Zenyatta is the priority now.

1:07 - 1:13 : Their Zen kills our Soldier, and drops a Discord on me - but then he ignores me in favor of going after our Hanzo. A little scratchy from range. One good (eh... decent) clip up-close and a whack with the butt of my pulse pistol finishes him off - but in that time, he's killed our Hanzo.

D.Va is now on the point, and her attention is on me.

1:13 - 1:22 : I strafe around her, emptying my pistols, and she takes most of my meager health bar with her. I'm down to 25 HP. That's how much shields Symmetra currently gives you. I'm basically dead.

But D.Va turns her attention to our Zarya, and together we melt her out of that mech, and off the map.
And that's our show. I can't believe how well Apache worked for this. Been wantin' to use that song for a while.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

I don't think any of this action is really as cool as the Diamond long cut - jumping off the platform and killing a Hanzo as I fly over him before he can reach that health pack notwithstanding - but going 20 and 1 is a good run in anyone's books.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Sorry this one took so long - I've been saving up footage for like two weeks, it seems, and every now and then I'll go in and go through it and cut it down, but even cutting it all down to cool stuff left me with like eighty minutes of footage. But this week also earned one of my favorite plays of all time, and only one enemy died in it.

So let me set the scene.

0:00 - 0:16 : We're defending the second point of Hanamura. I'm the only healer (Mercy) and we only have one tank (D.Va), but we're holding it together. I'm zippin' back and forth, keepin' my tank up, and I fly towards the bridge to try to rescue one of my friendlies, but they're dead by the time I get there. I land in front of a McCree who says "it's hiiiiiii-"

PotG went to an offense getting a triple or something, but whatever - that was one of the Plays of the Year. Teamwork, yeahhhh!

And the rest is all Tracer action. Naturally.

0:16 - 0:56 : Approaching the second checkpoint on Dorado, Tracer is behind enemy lines, running interference and keeping the reds busy while my team moves the payload. To begin, a Hanzo is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and doesn't hear Tracer's sneakers thumping along behind him - easy pickins at this range.

Dropping into the enemy line, McCree's already halfway gone - and easy pickins as well - leaving the Zarya alone to challenge my team while I turn around to deal with Zarya's last friend, Zenyatta.

Tracer Vs. Zenyatta is meant to be one-sided in Tracer's favor, but I've found a good Zenyatta can put me in the ground far faster than I can them. I pick my shots, grab cover for a moment and use my blinks to make sure he can't get a bead on me.

I screw it up with the Genji - should've gone straight for the health pack to deny it to him - but as soon as Winston lands, I know my work here is done, and leave him to his fate. By then, Mercy and Rein are ridin' up with the payload, and Mercy tops me off while I help Rein take down McCree.

That's some solid Tracer work.

0:56 - 1:03 : The cooldown on Lucio's boop is about five or six seconds - he pretty much has it up all the time, and when you know a Lucio is waiting to boop you off the edge of Lijiang, sometimes you just gotta' let him do it - so you can rewind out of the abyss and drop a pulse bomb on him with impunity.

Wrong place wrong time, Hanzo!

1:03 - 1:17 : Our Hanzo lets off a great Dragon, and blows the reds' support - Ana and Lucio - out of the water as their Hog pops his ult in a last-ditch attempt to keep us off the point. A well-placed Pulse Bomb addresses that threat, and then it's just cleaning up the Genji.

1:17 - 1:38 : This D.Va probably could have scared me off if she'd, y'know, shot at me while I was tearing her mech apart. Finishing her off with the melee felt good, I'll admit.

1:38 - 1:52 : Smacking a Rein around never gets old.

1:52 - 1:57 : Ahhh. Landing hits in midair, flying over your target, feelsgoodman.gif. Dropping a pulse bomb on him before you hit the ground? Feelsbetter.gif.

1:57 - 2:06 : Some nice Tracer teamwork on Lijiang, adding my (substantial) DPS to my team's push. First on the chopping block is Zenyatta, who hasn't noticed my flank and goes down easily. D.Va has already been brought low by the team, and requires a little scratch to finish off. And shooting a Genji out of the air while he's being electrocuted by my Winston felt very special.

2:06 - 2:12 : This was a beautiful whole match on Gibraltar, mostly on the back of a Mercy who really knew what she was doing. She was getting multi-rezzes left and right, and whenever I would push ahead to run intereference and shrink back into our line, she was right there with a heal to get me back to work. It was lovely.

Anyway, this ended up getting Play of the Game. A very, very lucky Play of the Game.

2:12 - 2:18 : Never gets old.

2:18 - 2:24 : Never gets old.

2:24 - 2:46 : I add my DPS to my team as the reds essentially ignore me (always helps!), and contest point B on Hanamura. Dropping a Pulse Bomb as soon as their Lucio Drops the Beat is... idiotic, but - weirdly enough - it did one-shot D.Va's mech - and the rest of the reds are so squishy, we push them back with little trouble. D.Va and Genji try to bail off the point under the bridge, but our McCree shoots the weakened D.Va out of the air as she falls, and I'm quick enough to get right into Genji's Face as he runs for the health pack - and he's alll out of cooldowns. Can't deflect me. Can't Swift Strike through me.

2:46 - 3:04 : I really could have done a more elegant job in taking out Bastion, but Rein's Earthshatter gives me all the time I need to top off my ult and drop the bomb on him.

I made this Mercy's life a living hell for this entire match (see the 12 Bit Blues extended clip show for more of that), and I was frankly amazed that I was able to take the Roadhog out before their Sombra dropped me. Once a Tracer gets hacked by Sombra, that's it, you're done.

You might be able to slip behind some nearby cover, but if she's hacked you, she knows where you are and she's comin' for you. Taking the Hog out first was definitely a small victory.

3:15 - 3:35 : This easily could have gone in the other direction, if the reds had capitalized on their Sombra's excellent ult. She hit nearly all of us with her EMP, meaning all of us were (aside from primary fire) defenseless against them - but it ended up working out very well. Sombra completely ignores me, spraying our D.Va with her submachinegun while D.Va simply shoots back and I swing in for the killing blow.

By the time the reds have moved forward to take advantage of the EMP, we're focusing fire through the door to the point, threatening them and pushing them back. The EMP's hack duration runs out, and we all move forward, shredding D.Va's mech - I drop the pulse bomb on it as it starts to blow because, if timed well, you can one-shot the D.Va as she pops out - and end up scoring D.Va and Lucio in the bargain.

Roadhog flees the point, but you can't outrun a Tracer.

3:35 - 3:44 : This was the push that won the game on Hanamura B, and it was particularly edifying. One of the reds had switched to Bastion after we took point A, and - as a highly-mobile smartbomb-droppin' DPSer - I reckon it's my job to deal with him. He's a mean-ass Bastion to begin with - able to land pretty sick headshots on me in Recon mode - but he's also an asshole.

Every time we engage, it's always me against him and one or two of his team members - not great odds - and while I take him out once or twice, they take me out at least three times for my trouble. And after each and every time, he teabags me.

I fucking hate it when people teabag. I don't know why I find teabagging so hateful and disrespectful, but emoting, saying "hi" or dropping your spray is just fun and games - but I fucking hate it.

Anyway, the point of this story is this Bastion was a fucking dick, and when Play of the Game went to the Tracer he'd been teabagging all match - oneshotting two of his allies (including his Genji, who had just pulled his sword), shearing off most of his HP while he's in Tank form, making him easy pickings for our McCree and finishing off the last enemy on the point - he quit from the lobby before the match round cards came up.

3:44 - 4:00 : I was really proud of this one. Rewind is best used to recover health. Yes, Tracer's the fastest hero in the game, and Blink permits me to run for health packs faster than anyone else, but it's really Rewind that keeps you alive in the thick of things. That being said, it has another use - you can rewind to achieve what would otherwise be impossible movement. I bail off the side of the walkway, Reinhardt turns away - this Tracer is no longer his problem... until she appears behind him again and cuts him down. And oh shits Sombra is backin' up right into the killzone, and then it's just me an' Mercy.

4:00 - 4:09 : I loathe enemy Sombras, but - as Tracer - I quite like them on my team. If you're behind enemy lines and there's a Sombra with you, you can do mad work by essentially "tanking" for the Sombra - distracting an enemy to aim at you while Sombra appears behind them to tear in with her SMG. Likewise, an enemy Rein who's been hacked by Sombra is too alluring to ignore - and sticking a Pulse Bomb to him, right when his Mercy shows up to save the day to get a two-for-one felt pretty sweet.

4:09 - 4:17 : This Roadhog had been murdering us on Hollywood, just by sticking on top of that building. He was hitting us with his (long-range) alt-fire when his hook was on cooldown, but otherwise he was just nailing his hooks, dragging my peeps up to that rooftop to eat a scrap blast to the face.

I'd had enough of that.

4:17 - 4:47 : To close out, just a lovely, consistent team-push on King's Row. Again, you'll get some of your best work in just by not flanking behind enemy lines and sticking with your tanks, complimenting their DPS. A move I've become quite fond of, lately, is doing just that and waiting until I see an enemy health bar a little too low. Then - because I haven't been zipping around like mad - I burn two blinks to zip back there as the wounded foe runs for cover to finish them off. If it's dicey after the kill, I can always rewind back behind my line. Bye, Soldier!

Taking down a Roadhog is a helluva lot easier with a D.Va running interference for you, and look, Soldier got rezzed! Run, Soldier, run! (Because you can totally outrun Tracer!)

And that's our show! Special shoutout to Endless for showing me the exact position and aim you need to get the ball in the basket!

Oh, and here's all the decent footage that I cut from the show this week! Half the reason I make Clip Shows is because I love watching them at work, when I have a task that requires me to just kinda' sit and not look at my monitor for a half hour. Nine minutes of decent footage set to some of my favorite tracks from Kid Koala's 12 Bit Blues will be a nice addition.

Friday, November 25, 2016

I've had art up at my desk ever since I started my current position - about three years ago, I think? As soon as I had a desk of my own - it's a cubicle, really, but it's my cubicle, and that's a luxury I'd never known before - I got permission from my supervisor to (1) have a stereo system at my desk that I can jack an iPod in to and (2) put up art.

I didn't ask to put up the art. I just put them up and waited for him to come by... and not complain.

A few of the original pieces I'd put up on the first day remain - A Fine Lunch Sketch, Ah - A Snake! and that lovely piece of Dark Souls fan art.

A few weeks ago, one of my peers came over and - just because he understands on a deep and spiritual level how, precisely, to irritate me - he rearranged a few things on my desk. Put a stapler out of reach, put these papers over here, just to be a dick.

So I went to his desk and moved a bunch of his things - eye for an eye. He escalated.

When I came back to my desk after a smoke break, I discovered all of my art had been rearranged, and left hanging all weird and akimbo. There they remained, weird and askew, for half a month because I just couldn't be bothered. This week, I brought in Justin Currie's Zenyatta, and re-did all the hooks and set everything up all purdy. Then I took some pictures to show you.

This piece is called Inside the Doorway, and it's always sat in a really hidden corner - which I like, because the firelink shrine at the beginning of Dark Souls, too, always felt like such a secret and hidden thing. You almost have to wedge yourself behind a big cabinet at my desk, then lean down and look under an overhanging roll-top cupboard, hanging off a wall, to see it.

Not many people know it's there, but I love it.

The main event...

It's a lot of Justin Currie stuff. Ah - A Snake! hangs above two screenshots of Vanillaware games (Dragon's Crown and Muramasa Rebirth). I've always meant to get a PS4 screen of Odin Sphere up there, but again - can't be bothered.

To its right is another one of Currie's - Fear My Song - which was cover art for a for-charity album a bunch of local bands released.

Then there's Currie's Zenyatta (commissioned by Blizzard for a fan art thing they did around Overwatch's launch) and one of Currie's originals - and my favorite of his work - A Fine Lunch Sketch. I have no idea why that dapper deer-man appeals to me so much, but I absolutely love it.

Zenyatta's over there, behind my computer monitor, because so much of the image is in the top half of the frame, and nothing really important is cut off when I look up at it. Likewise, A Fine Lunch Sketch is in prime real estate, but the actual headliner spot belongs to T. Racer.

JN3's T.Racer is easily the most... risque thing I've got up at the office. There's something vaguely erotic about it - the curve of her hip, bum and thigh, the lateral muscles clearly defined under the racing suit. I don't have it up as like... a girly poster, or something, but I have had a woman in the office tell me she likes it, and that it's "sexy."

I agree. Working in an office (a government office, no less), I note its suggestions with trepidation. It's nice to have a lady walk up, tell me she likes it and thinks it's sexy, but the moment someone comes up to me and tells me they find it offensive, I'll pull it and apologize.

I hope I never need to, though.

I love a lot about it - the exceeding coolness of my favorite Overwatch hero notwithstanding. I love the kerchief streaming off her throat into billowing pinstripes, the serious aggression of the racing helmet, sponsor patches and pulse pistols - all of which you have to get past before you arrive at the curves - but I also love the way it lets flat colors kind of leap forward and completely dominate all those sharp details at the top, while a few well-chosen blends and gradients gives her lower half real three-dimensional definition, and depth, before it descends into psychedelic speeding pinstripe piping at the bottom.

JN3 actually has a lot of Overwatch stuff available for purchase, but I don't think any of it even begins to approach T.Racer.
Then there's Gillian Newland's Dino and Little Girl, which everyone loves, and - cut off in the above picture, on the far right, is Justin Currie's Plunge.

CHANCE...

...is actually named David.

This is where I write about video games. Beyond the simple pleasure of it, I hope to use this place as a bit of a mental gym to re-develop my writing style - something I seem to have misplaced around the turn of the century.

It will also serve as a personal blog, but for the most part if you enjoy discussion of gaming news, independent reviews and pointless musings, you have come to precisely the right place.

It's my custom to do at least one post per day - but whether it ends up being ten posts of breaking news and a review, or one post complaining about how I have a tummy ache is not set in stone.